Page 119 of Tarnished Queen

“I’m sorry… he isn’t going to be eating with me?”

“No, I’m cooking for one,” she explains. “Just you tonight. But between you and me, I made extras for myself. No sense cooking if I can’t eat some, too, right?”

I try to smile and nod, but my mind is spinning. Did I misunderstand him when he asked me to dinner? I assumed it was a date, but maybe he was just offering to feed me.

But no, he said we’d talk over dinner. We can’t talk if he isn’t with me.

I watch the chef’s ponytail swish as she starts plating my food, and I want to ask her if she knows where Nikolai is. If she knows when he’ll be back. If he said anything to her about me. But how pathetic would that make me look? Two days into a marriage and I don’t know where my husband is.

Instead, I sit down at the island and wait for my dinner.

A minute later, the chef turns around and slides my plate across the island to me. “Salmon pasta with a creamy garlic sauce. Rumor is you’re pregnant, so I wanted to make sure to get those omega-3 fatty acids in.”

I raise my eyebrows. “The omega-whatty whats?”

“This is why I’m the chef and you’re the diner,” she laughs. She holds out her hand. “I’m Francesca, by the way. I’m not sure we’ve actually met.”

I shake her hand and then practically lunge for my fork. “We haven’t met officially. But your cooking is incredible.”

“Thank you. Nikolai is a great client to work for. He lets me have free rein to cook whatever I want. Some clients can be really demanding.”

“Not me,” I say. “So long as I’m fed, I’m happy.”

“My kind of woman.”

Francesca pulls a Tupperware container out of her bag and starts to fill it with pasta.

“Is that for you?” I ask.

“Yeah. I’ll take it with me and eat at home.”

“Or you could eat now,” I offer. “It’s not like I have some hot date I’m waiting on.”

There’s a bit too much bitterness in my tone for my liking, so I slap on a smile.

Francesca hesitates for a minute, but the woman is clearly not shy, so she quickly grins and plops down on a stool next to me. “Thanks. Food is always better fresh. I tell Nikolai that all the time. ‘I’ll cook in your kitchen for every meal if you want. I can make your food fresh.’ I mean, he’s paying me enough that I’d spoon-feed him gold-leaf caviar if he asked me to. But no, he wants me to cook from my house and store the food in his fridge. I guess his schedule is a bit unpredictable.”

“A bit, yeah,” I agree. Though I’m guessing Nikolai’s logic has a lot more to do with the fact that bloodied men occasionally show up at his door and knife fights break out in his kitchen every now and then. The less of that Francesca sees, the better.

She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me, though. I was hustling between four different clients when Nikolai hired me. Now, he’s the only one. I’m living the dream.”

“Four clients?” I shake my head. “How did you manage that?”

She laughs. “I didn’t. I had no work/life balance. I worked constantly, never slept. It was ridiculous. They say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, but in my experience, it just means you work way more than you should and don’t know how to take a break.”

“Maybe I should sit you down for a talk with Nikolai.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. My bitterness leaking out through a crack I try quickly to patch. “Just that unpredictable schedule, you know? But he’s great. Amazing. The best.”

There are a few seconds of silence, and heat blooms across my cheeks. I hear Elise’s voice in my head:There she goes again, Blabbermouth Belle.Badmouthing Nikolai to his employees is probably not something a wife should be doing. It’s not a great look, to say the least.

I open my mouth to take it all back when Francesca finally responds. “You can be upset with amazing people and still think they’re amazing,” she says softly. “They can still be amazing, even. They are just also a person who upset you.”

I huff out a weak laugh. “Am I that transparent?”

“Well, maybe I’m just used to people walking into the kitchen and being thrilled to see me because I’m making them food, but you looked downright depressed at the sight of me. I could tell you were expecting someone else.”

“I thought he was taking me out to dinner tonight.”

Francesca winces. “Maybe that’s why Nikolai requested I make a special dessert, too. He was trying to soften the blow.”

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